Wednesday, December 01, 2010

How Much Does Birth Order Shape Our Lives?

There are lots of expectations and assumptions about how birth order
may shape our adult lives, and many of them go back ages. Centuries ago,
the oldest son had huge incentives to stay on track and live up to
family expectations - that's because, by tradition, he was set to
inherit almost everything.

"Historically the
practice of primogeniture was very common in Europe," says Frank
Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the Institute of Personality and Social
Research at the University of California, Berkeley. "So firstborns had
every reason to preserve the status quo and be on good terms with their
parents."

Now you may think any "first born" effect would have completely
disappeared in modern times. But not so, say experts who study birth
order. Researchers first examined the status of firstborns among
Washington power brokers in 1972.

"I expected
that there would be a disproportionately high number of firstborns
among members of Congress" says psychologist Richard Zweigenhaft of
Guilford College. "And that's exactly what I found."

Out
of 121 representatives and senators included in his sample, Zweigenhaft
found that 51 were firstborns, 39 were middle children, and 31 were
youngest children. It wasn't a huge overrepresentation of firstborns,
but the difference, he says, is too significant to ignore.

Several
surveys and studies conducted throughout the years have found that
firstborns do edge out later-borns in lots of high-achieving
professions, from corporate CEOs to college professors to U.S.
presidents and Supreme Court justices. There's even evidence that
firstborn children are about 3 IQ points smarter than their second-born
siblings.

So
what nudges oldest children to be conscientious, striving achievers?
One factor is that firstborns tend to get undivided parental resources,
explains Sulloway.

"When the second [child] comes along, the oldest still gets half of
all that [attention], so younger siblings never have a chance to catch
up," he says.

It's not that mothers and
fathers intend to parent differently — oftentimes it just works out that
way. Partly it's the inexperience that makes some first-time parents go
overboard: signing children up for every lesson and activity
imaginable, for example.

Experts
say it's never entirely predictable how birth order may influence our
personalities, behaviors or family dynamics — there are plenty of
firstborns who don't fit the mold.

"The one
thing you can say about birth order is that it's not absolutely
deterministic of how people's lives turn out," says Sulloway.

Experts say it's just one small piece of the puzzle.

"I'm
not sure I would say that birth order plays a strong role in who we
become," Zweigenhaft says. "Birth order contributes to who we become."

After
all, we're all amalgams of many childhood influences, from teachers and
peers to random life events, including turns of good luck and bad.